Morning all. Thought I would show some pics of the brake job I did yesterday and see what ya'll think. I've noticed that the brake pads aren't wearing even. I think there's two issues. First, the pad is too far out on the brake disk. If you look at the disk you can see that there's about 1/16 on the inside of the disk that the pad is not contacting. The second issue is that the piston is pressing too high on the pad. The top of the pad (nearer to the stem that holds the pad in place with the cotter pin) is getting thinner than the bottom, and my guess is that it's due to this off center piston to pad contact area. You can also see the wear ring on the back on the pad where the piston presses against the pad is offset to the top of the pad instead of being more centered. I've looked over how the caliper is mounted to the frame and I decided to thin out the ball-and-socket washers that hold the caliper to the caliper mounting bracket. If you look closely at the two pics of the front and rear calper mounting points, it's the bottom washer (the socket in this case) that I've ground down. Filed about 2 hundreths of an inch off the flat side that touches the caliper mounting bracket. This has made a small but noticable difference, but, only about 2 hundreths of an inch. I'm thinking I could also grind the mounting brackset surface down another 1/16 of an inch to get the caliper deepr down on the rotor without the rotor touching the caliper. I think this would result in more surface area of the pad touching the rotor and help to eliminate the top edge of the pad not touching and resulting in that lip.
However, this doesn't address the pad-piston contact placement. That piston will still be too high, resulting in more pressure on the top of the pad. The black pads are oem, and the bronze looking pads are aftermarket. Both appear to be exactly (near as makes no difference) the same dimentions and, importantly, that hole for the cotter pin is drilled in the same place on both the OEM and aftermarket pads. Given that I only need to move the pads about 1/16 inch (maybe 1/8) to get that piston more centered on the pad, I don't think drilling another hole is feasible.
Wondering if anyone else has seen this issue or has any ideas or thoughts. It looks to me like the bike was asembled with the wrong pads and spacers, and so everything is out of allignment.
However, this doesn't address the pad-piston contact placement. That piston will still be too high, resulting in more pressure on the top of the pad. The black pads are oem, and the bronze looking pads are aftermarket. Both appear to be exactly (near as makes no difference) the same dimentions and, importantly, that hole for the cotter pin is drilled in the same place on both the OEM and aftermarket pads. Given that I only need to move the pads about 1/16 inch (maybe 1/8) to get that piston more centered on the pad, I don't think drilling another hole is feasible.
Wondering if anyone else has seen this issue or has any ideas or thoughts. It looks to me like the bike was asembled with the wrong pads and spacers, and so everything is out of allignment.
